China Labour Bulletin reports on a forthcoming collection of poems by Xu Lizhi 许立志, the migrant laborer who committed suicide on September 30, 2014:
A New Day is now the title of a forthcoming anthology of Xu’s work that contains nearly 200 poems dating back to 2010. Most of the poems were written while Xu was employed as a production line worker at Foxconn’s massive Longhua factory complex in Shenzhen.
The poetry critic Qin Xiaoyu who edits the new anthology describes Xu as both the voice and the chronicler of China’s millions of dispossessed migrant workers. Xu’s poetry, he said, was “simple yet powerful, both lyrical and critical, often using absurd or shocking images to reveal the tragedy of life on the lowest rungs of society.”
, Mark Nowak, Shengqing Wu, and Rodrigo Toscano. Listen at the page, or here:
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New Books in Poetry links to many other sites featuring or discussing Xu’s work in English, but they did not link to my translations, which China Labour Bulletin published in November.